It’s easy to get frazzled cleaning your home, especially when you’re short on time. If you want to streamline your cleaning process, you need to pick a room and stay in it until it’s done.

As you clean and pick up clutter, you may feel the urge to leave the room and put things back where they came from. But as Taryn Williford at Apartment Therapy explains, you’re better off quarantining yourself in the disaster area:

...don’t put it away. It seems counter-intuitive, but if you head into the bedroom to put the thing away, you might begin to straighten up upstairs. Instead, leave the things at the bottom of the stairs (or the entrance to the hallway, or wherever), and continue on your task.

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If you have guests on the way, focus on getting the living room and kitchen clean. Don’t let yourself leave those rooms until you’ve done everything you can do without leaving, then go put everything away at once. You’ll save yourself a ton of time and effort.